Paul Beatty, Author HARDtalk

Welcome to HARDtalk. I'm Stephen Sackur. The more things change, the

more they stay the same. It is an adage that seems tailor-made for the

vexed issue of race relations in America. After eight years of a

black president, they made a swell of demographic and social change,

black Americans still feel the bite of discrimination and prejudice. How

best to respond? My guess today is Paul Beatty, a book -- his book

deploys dark satire to undertake a black American experience. It is

funny and provocative but is it also fundamentally bleak?

Paul Beatty, welcome to HARDtalk. Let me start with a very broad

question. It seems that cost -- optimism has also been seen as the

default mood setting of Americans. You an optimist? No, I'm not. I'm

not a pessimist either. Some reading the book, Sellout, it won the Booker

prize, some would freeze it and think this guy has a very bleak

worldview. -- read it. Bello I don't think it's very bleak. I think

hopefully within the energy, it has normalised the bleakness. There is a

vicious humour, it's very funny. Fundamentally, you have a book which

says, pretty much, race relations and the experience of being black in

America today is not that different from the way it has ever been,

including the era of outright slavery, segregation and deep

prejudice. I can say that. I'm 54. I'm not 254 sites aren't speak to

how it's different and I'm sure it is different. My life is different

within the 54 year span. Better? You refuse to say better. Barack Obama

says, when he talks as the figurehead of the nation about race

issues, he does say that change has come and things are better and we

are making progress. Good for him, he's the President, he should say

that. He shouldn't say it if it is not true. Bello C'mon, President say

things that aren't true all the titles we have had a huge war over

things that aren't true. It goes hand in hand. Explained to me why

you won't say that. I don't speak to everybody else, only myself.

Everybody who is African-American, California, Los Angeles, I just

speak for myself. We is a word owned use of. It's from my perspective.

Not trying to send this message from the body politic black. It's just my

perspective. Those are my words. It's Obama's job in a weird way. The

book is kind of about what is progress? What does it feel like?

How do you measure it? You are talking about American optimism.

Think there is some truth to that, in no. It's kind of an optimism that

is sort of spreading to world politics in a weird way. And nobody

is doing things that the Americans do. You have to kind of the

optimistic, I do rate that is new or not. --I don't know. There has been

a lot of police shootings in the news in the States. This is for me

old hat. I can't remember are time when they went police shootings. You

are a guy who grew up in southern California. I guess at defining

moment for you probably was the Rodney King shooting and the riots

in LA? Delly I don't know if it was a defining moment. It was a moment

that these things happened and it was just one of those things, that's

when the match finally ignites or whatever happens. The last straw. It

was on tape. Let me say what I was going to say. Go on. Oh Balmer was

in this new Smithsonian museum. -- Obama will stop standing in this

room. He is flanked in a background of all this icon of iconography. A

black woman Robin Roberts is asking him, he has a passion in her voice.

-- she has a passion. She asks him about the specific shooting when a

guy has his hands up and it is on tape and the cop just shoots the guy

in the back. Balmer equivocate. I think it is that equivocation that

doesn't read as optimism, in a weird way. -- oh Obama. People want to

hear something beyond diplomacy. They want to hear what he really

thinks. It's hard to read in a weird way. I remember when I saw it, I

wasn't angry but it's just that,, what is the true power of the

position. He is the commander-in-chief. He is not the

police chief. It just a weird thing about what this needs. -- this

means. We interviewed Professor Cornell West who is one of the most

intellectual thinkers of Black America today. Hopefully he's just a

great thinker. Exactly. When he thinks about race and when he thinks

about Obama, I don't think it used the specific word a sell-out that

you titled your book with. He is says that Barack Obama has sold out

black America. Yeah. I have a hard time. It's weird. There's a lot of

impulse behind that book. There was a funny book that was about uncle

Tom, I can't think of the title. You go through the book and its every

single black American who is of note has an entry in them. Some people

will call Cornell West as sell-out for their own reasons. I'm not a

person... I don't, you know, is not that I'm a huge fan of Obama, I

think he has his faults. It's that thing, it's a hard thing to say that

because somebody is of a certain race or a certain gender that they

owe that demographic something specifically. It doesn't work like

that. It's the notion of people should know better. Often that works

in the reverse, the adverts. It is the people that should quote,

unquote, know better. Some people are the most insensitive in a

weightless top I'm not calling Obama ruthless. -- ruthless. You picked me

up when I said Cornell West was a leading black thinker and you said

that he is a thinker. Good point. A lot in the book and what you are

raising is about identity. When it comes to being a black American and

to a degree that blackness drives the way you live in the world and

becomes your identity. What is the answer for you? I don't have Nance.

I wish I did. The identity is shifting, it's changing. --I don't

have an answer. One of the things about identity that is interesting,

there is a concept of self actualisation. You reach this

Nirvana and consciousness. Some of the book is based on a guy, a

psychologist named William Cross who came up with a scale of Migro to

black consciousness. -- negro. It's fascinating. It was done with such

care. It is fascinating. The central character in your book who goes on

to do these absurd things like he acquires a slave, he is a black man

but he acquires his own slave and ghost on to segregate the school in

the southern California town but he is a likeable character. -- he goes

on. The relationship with his father was used as a social experiment. His

father was trying in a way that you have described to condition him to

become at the right-thinking black person. -- white thinking. Did you

have that in your life? I didn't grow up with my mum is beautiful.

She is a super genius. I ask my mum everything and she knows the answer.

Did she discuss with you about how to live as a black person? My mum

never talked about race with us. She didn't. Me and my sisters are all

left-handed. Nobody in my family is left-handed other than us and we

would ask my mum and she said that she tied our right hands behind our

back. Whatever being left-handed is supposed to give you cognitively.

She also race at Japanese... -- raised us as Japanese, we shouldn't

get into this. She was trying to broaden our scope. Bow in the house.

My mother is a huge Asia-phile. UMass irate these scopes of black

thinking and black culture in a really funny way. -- you mass. Let's

talk about language. You spray cuss words throughout the book because

its street talk. No, it's not Straight Talk. I'm not going to let

you get away with that because it is not. -- street talk. For me, the

language is the whole thing to me. The book is about everything. We are

talking about blackness. I am always thinking about what that is, self

and what that means. My blackness is all cultural appropriation. It's

from where I grew up. It's from my Latina American friends, my

Filipino-American friends, you know, degrees to whatever black ears. I

just happen to be black, thank goodness. -- whatever black ears.

It's not just about black. It's everything. To me, it is everything.

The language is how I try to render that. To me, the language is what

you quote street talk, the way I talk to my friends. It's just the

way we talk to each other because we have known each other. I have an

academic background so it is some of that. What about this specific. I'm

only picking on it because it is so emotive to so many different

audiences in the United States and a round the world. The N word. What's

the letter N word? For me, it's a difficult proposition. We don't use

it on the BBC. People will know what an talking about. When I say that

there is certain ways that you write in a way that a white person

couldn't write. That word is an example. That's HARDtalk but you

can't talk so hard on TV. Some people get offended. Absolutely,

there is no reason why they shouldn't. That work comes up in

that book because Mark Twain uses it to 100 and something times. It's not

only black people can use it, people have been using it. That Mark Twain

was writing in a different period. If white people use it today, they

would get hammered. Why would they want to use it? Is that thing, it's

a word. But it wrecked a Lent of... Slavery, disrespect, precious.

Absolutely, thank you for that. -- prejudice. So what you asking me? I

read in the New York Times, praise for the book was consistent and the

critics loved it. Yeah. I read about reading you did in New York City.

The writer who was present said it was interesting because the audience

was predominantly white and the writer said it seemed to them that

some in the audience didn't go whether to laugh or not. They were

unsure of this territory. Yeah. I don't think that has to do with race

necessarily. That's what room you are in. I read fop black audiences.

Some laugh, some don't. The thing is not just about race Maginness stop I

have won the Man Booker Prize. A huge price. -- prize.

I'm trying to pay my something. I did a thing at the Cure and group in

the States and a woman who was interviewing me was, like, as a

white person I wasn't sure how to come to the book. A colleague said

why do you start with the book was funny, and she said that opened up

some stuff. The person who told you that is all so white. Everybody's

bringing their own things and in securities to everything we read.

We've become a very uptight culture. Some of us have, some haven't. I

agree with you on some level. I think we have a hard time talking

about grey areas. We are really good with pontification and

prognostication, but it's that great stuff that for me is the most

interesting stuff, the stuff where we are lost and I don't know what I

think about something. It's a book, it's not a memoir, it's fiction and

some of the stuff I believe some of the time and some of the stuff I

don't believe, I'm just trying to tell a story. In one way, just in

terms of plot, it's a story that doesn't have the ending you might

wish to have. There's this wonderful premise that the main character in

the book is actually being taken to the Supreme Court for violating the

constitution. You kind of want to know at the end whether he's going

to be found guilty or not. There is no resolution, is that because you

don't believe in resolution in your life? It's a huge, psychological...

I used to see my doctor and psychologist, there's a huge

undertone in the book. The book ends with a discussion of what closure

is. I've been talking for a while about the book in person, do you

ever see it getting better, I don't know what that is, I don't know what

people want from closure because people want different things and I

don't know if I believe in a construct. We were talking about

Barack Obama earlier, and when he won the first time, I had a friend

of mine who I have known for a long time and he had an American flag in

his car, and I said what's up with the flag, I'm don't know you as a

flag waver, he said he felt like America has paid its debt and I said

its debt to who? I said to us, to black Americans. I was, like, man,

that's a huge debt. It's more than just ask. Not trying to put

everything on equal footing but there's Native Americans, the

environment, there's a huge thing -- just ask. There's a huge thing when

someone feels like that debt has been paid so for me he is bigger. I

want to come back to that. It's not just about race, there's so much

going on in today's America and I want to know what you're thinking

about and writing next but before that, there's one other thing about

your writing that fascinates me. People have called you a satirist,

you prefer the word absurdist. Absurdist is better. Whatever the

right word is, you find ways to make really difficult stuff funny. Is

there anything that for you is off-limits? In terms of getting

entertainment, a laugh, comedic value. I don't think about it being

off-limits, I think what the narrative on trying to tell. If

language is so important, and I think there are things that can be

read on the surface, like I violated some sacred trust, I don't think

that. I don't think anything's off-limits. Everybody has the right

to use whatever language they want to use. It's always been the case.

If somebody feels like they don't have that, that's on them, I'm not

trying to say it's equal and a level playing field, I'm not saying that

either. Why do it if something is off-limits? That's for me. For you,

the civil rights movement isn't off-limits, some of the great heroes

of black freedom movements. Where would you end? Could you imagine

writing a funny novel about a genocide? My first book is about a

genocide! So, yeah, of course I could! Yeah, my first book is about

that. So, yeah, I don't think about that stuff very much. It's not like

I'm that sensitive that other people wouldn't think about that but as

much as I can I'm considerate about what I'm talking about and how I'm

saying it, the language is so important to me. These things, I'm

sort of mocking them, but these are things I care very deeply about and

are things that I respect. You can do both? Absolutely. Care and

respect? In the same sentence, in the same joke, I think that can be

done and I start by really killing myself, whether it's apparent or

not, that's the person I'm picking on, I really try to test myself and

where are my boundaries and stuff like that. That's where I start

with, myself. Bringing it back to the United States today, Obama's

leaving office, the next president is going to be Donald J Trump. You

didn't know that when you wrote the book. It's a fascinating take on

modern America but America's sort of had another shift since you wrote

it. Yeah. How are you feeling about the United States of today? I think

some people feel... They're pleased as punch, I'm not one of those

people. I feel in a weird way similar to how I always feel, which

is very cautious and very pessimistic. It was like that with

Obama. I wonder whether you... I take your point, your writing isn't

all about race, neither is your perception of the world, but

nonetheless in the switch from Obama to Trump, there are some people in

the civil rights movement and politics saying this is a disaster

for minorities. It is. Or it might be. I don't know what will happen.

This is a guy who ran a whole identity based campaign. There's a

thing for me, there's a white self-hatred in a way. And Trump kind

of fed into that. It's really scary. It always feels like it's 1913. I

know a lot of people are trying to compare it to feeling like the late

1920s and 30s with all the nationalism, but I'm going earlier

somehow, that weird... Archduke Ferdinand match hasn't been struck,

that will send the world into a weird kind of chaos. I don't know

what Trump means. This guy was chosen for a reason, people feel a

certain way. There's an image that they want to project, there's

something in how they see themselves and how the country sees them, they

want him to be that figure and that face of something that they feel

that they are losing. It's really scary. I mean, a guy... Yeah,

picking this retroactive, out and out antipathy for what he sees...

It's very scary. Scary, does it make you feel alienate it from your own

country? I can't say I never a person who's ever felt like this is

my place, I live there, it's my home, but I'm not a person, like...

I kind of know that it's not this place that was designed for me. But

it's my home so I have to make it work. Its job supposedly is to make

it also works for me, so these things are happening in concert. On

the show we have had different, sort of, voices from the black American

community. We've had al-Shaar can not so long ago and representatives

from Black Lives Matter, there are approaches to protest, what's your

take on how best to achieve change in the United States? -- Al

Sharpton. I don't have a take on it, I always imagine it in these books

but my take is to write, that's what I do, that's what gives me pleasure.

I don't write to provide answers. I get nervous when people tell me how

to think, it's one of the things about this election that's made me

nervous. People are so comfortable being told how to think because in a

weird way someone is telling you not to think. These things make me

nervous, I'm always nervous. I've learned that I write from being a Jo

at a point of being uncomfortable and apprehensive but at some when I

write there is a sense that I'm unfettered. Much more bold on the

page than I am in real life. That's interesting you say that, on the

page you're fizzing with energy and yet you go to places people wouldn't

go, so where are you going next? I'm intrigued to know where you're going

to take the spirit that's in this book. I just write, I have stories

that come to me when I over time, I have a couple of ideas. Are they

going to be about contemporary America? Awoke one of them actually

is and the other one might not be. My timelines are fuzzy. You opened

up with this thing of the more things change the more things feel

the same. One of the nice things, you know, my first novel I was 20

years old and some guy recently wrote a review of that first novel

about how still applicable it is. I think good art does that hopefully.

I can relate to this, you once said that writing is hard, in a way you

hate writing but you can't stop doing it. There's nothing that gives

me the kind of satisfaction of writing. I don't want to throw it

away just yet. So you're going to keep doing it? I hope so. I hope so

too. Paul Beatty, thanks for coming on HARDtalk. Thanks, Stephen. I

really enjoyed it.